Invisible Illness Bingo.

I’ve posted before on my experience with invisible disability, and linked to amandaw on the “But you don’t look sick!” phenomenon. And for further background, everyone should read the “Open Letter to Those Without CFS/Fibro” at Not Done Living.

Now Annaham at Hamblog has come out with the Invisible Illness Bingo card, v. 1.0. “But you don’t look sick!” features, as does “Lucky! You get to stay in bed all day!” and “But I went through hard times too, and I managed just fine. Let’s talk about what a great person I am.”

Anyone who has experienced chronic illness is likely to recognise a few of these. (Perhaps you’d like to punch a wall or two.) If you haven’t had the pleasure of a debilitating but invisible illness, you might still recognise a few of these as having flitted through your head (or even emerged from your mouth) in the past when confronted with the frustrating reality of chronic illness in others. Perhaps when they’re all down on a card like this, we can all recognise these comments for what they are, and for what they do to people on the sharp end.

Filed under: disability, health, peeves

Nassssty sysssssstem, we hatesssss it we does

Why on earth would a telco have an online registration system for prepaid SIM cards which doesn’t accept street numbers with letters (eg 29B) or hyphenated surnames?

And why on earth would a telco with such a bizarre system then advertise on their phone help service “did you know it’s even easier to register your phone online”?

IS. NOT.

Filed under: sheer incompetence

More heat than light on Haneef: where’s the transcripts then?

Crossposted on Larvatus Prodeo, where each of the previous Haneef threads has generated hundreds of comments.

Much was made yesterday of claims that Indian police believe that there are links between Haneef and extreme jihadists. To kick this thread off, from The Hindu (Online edition of India’s National Newspaper):

Meanwhile, reports in a section of the Australian media that a dossier prepared by the Bangalore police on Mohammed Haneef on his alleged links with the Al-Qaeda have come as a surprise to the police here.

Bangalore Police Commissioner Neelam Achuta Rao told The Hindu on Wednesday that they had not prepared any such dossier.

So where has the alleged Haneef dossier actually come from?

Secondly,

Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, law, sheer incompetence

Slouching toward Bushism

And the police state lurches ever closer, with the SMH today reporting on proposed legislation for “New secret search powers”.

The proposed powers would give police the right to execute search, seizure and surveillance under so-called “delayed notification warrants”, without judicial oversight, and including the assumption of false identities by police to gain access. The subject can be denied notice of the s/s/s for up to six months, with extensions available on Ministerial approval, again with no judicial involvement:

The lack of judicial oversight was justified by the Minister for Justice and Customs, David Johnston, on the grounds that a court or judicial officer might leak news of the warrant.

“I don’t want to impugn anyone, but the security of these operations has to be pristine,” Senator Johnston told the Herald.

The article continues:

The position of the Labor Opposition is unknown. The party did not return calls yesterday.

Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, law, moral panics, obstreperation

Today’s talkback army talking points

In response to Dr Mohammed Haneef’s interview last night on 60 minutes:

Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?

He was only inconvenienced for 4 weeks.

Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s all been corrected now.

Sure he was incarcerated, but he was fed and safe and he must have known that if he was innocent he’d eventually be set free.

He shouldn’t have been traumatised by that, he should be happy to be contributing to the safety of society by being thoroughly investigated.

The attempts by partisans to game talkback shows are becoming more and more obvious.

The last two lpoints strike me as particularly disingenuous. They’re trying to imply that only a person with some guilty secrets would be traumatised by being investigated. As if anybody who’s been paying attention to justice narratives (both fact and fiction) at any time in their life ever doesn’t know that innocent people get persecuted all the time for cynical political gain. Why on earth should Haneef’s pofessed innocence have made him unafraid of the investigation’s intensity?

Filed under: authoritarianism, elections, law, sheer incompetence

Piggy in the middle

Note: I analogise between racism and sexism in this post. Yes, I realise they’re not the same thing. However, I believe there are enough similarities and parallels to draw useful analogies.

I was having a poke around on fora.tv, a rather neat site with video of book readings, speeches, and appearances. One video is a July 21st reading of Jessica Valenti’s book, “Full Frontal Feminism”.

Asked by an audience member about “men’s emancipation” in the US, Valenti replied:

I have a chapter on men in the book, because I do think that it’s really important. If we’re talking about feminism we have to talk about the way patriarchy hurts men too, the way sexism hurts men too, because If we’re going to build a really strong feminist movement we have to have men involved as well. You know I think that the best way to do that is to say, “Hey, we’re not the only ones suffering from sexism here, this is hurting you as well”.

What struck me here is the contrast between this rather pervasive idea of “men should support feminism cos sexism hurts men”, and ideas about white allies in the antiracism movement. Is anyone going around saying that the only way to enrol white people into antiracism would be to talk to them about the ways in which racism hurts white people? Not that I’ve seen. To me, that would be the absolute pinnacle of repugnant white-centrism. You’d have to be positively festering with self-entitled unexamined white-privilege-boils to think that racism is wrong because it might occasionally hurt white people’s feelings.

There is absolutely no need to centre white people in antiracism. The reason racism is wrong is because it hurts people of colour (and, incidentally, disproportionately women of colour), not because it hurts white people. White people should fight racism, should ally with antiracists, because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s in their own self-interest. They should ally because that’s part of being a decent human being.

Doesn’t all of the above sound blindingly obvious?

So why is there this pernicious streak of male-centrism in feminism?

How about men supporting feminism because it’s wrong to hurt women, not because “sexism hurts men”? Why are women thinking that this is too much to ask for?

Filed under: obstreperation, peeves

Why so offended? It’s not like I said any bad words!

“Oh, the civility!” is of course the catchcry of pearlclutchers everywhere, especially on that subset of socially-conservative blogs where a bit of cussing is viewed as inherently and self-evidently an order of magnitude more offensive than calling someone a pervert or a traitor.

Here’s a couple of comments from another blog which point out just how much this “civility” standard is rank hypocrisy, which cuts right to the heart of our Civility Guidelines here at Hoyden About Town.

Rheinhard:

Consider 2 pieces of writing:

1. A lengthy screed written by lawyers and statisticians explaining, with numerous polysyllabic phrases and data extrapolations galore, the benefits that would accrue to the national discourse, the economy, and morality in general should the polity choose to put all of the citizenry who happen to be of Jewish extraction into cleansing facilities (which, it is explained in a technical footnote, will contain only the most humane and sanitary of gas chambers and crematoria)

or

2. A short flyer posted on lamposts telling the Nazi Punks to F**K Off.

Which set of writers would you prefer to dine with?

Filed under: blogging, conservatism, culture wars, ethics, moral panics, peeves

Milking it in California

Edited to add: Two other blogs have now picked up on this story.

The Lactivist notes “The International Breast Milk Project in the News Again“.

And MamaBear at breastfeedingsymbol.org has done some ringing around – directly to the iThemba Lethu orphanage. Her post You’re Going to Want to Read This details the fact the the numbers are still just not. adding. up:

Since the IBMP made their promise to send 55,000 ounces of donated breast milk, they have sent the one shipment of 5,343 ounces in May 2007. Their rate of shipments to Africa is about two shipments a year so far.

Why is it important to know all of this? Because the International Breast Milk Project got 55,000 ounces of donated milk because of Oprah. On Oprah’s show, it was stated that the donated milk would go to Africa, not 25% of it. The IBMP promised that all those 55,000 ounces would be sent to Africa, and that thereafter, 25% of what is donated would be sent. At the current rate and quantity that the IBMP is sending milk (an average of two shipments a year), it would take almost five years to send the originally promised 55,000 ounces to Africa.

MamaBear also notes ways to contribute that don’t line anyone’s pockets: you can donate milk and/or money directly to iThemba Lethu, or to non-profit milk banking or milk sharing networks in your locality.

~~
The O.C. Register today carried this story: Rancho realtor donates breast milk to Africa.

You might recall that I’ve written in the past about the close ties between breastmilk-for-profit Prolacta and the “International Breastmilk Project”. The Oprah-advertised “charity”, supposedly independent from Prolacta, was outed as providing 75% of milk donated for African orphans directly to Prolacta for sale within the United States:

Feed the wo-orld… one baby, anyhow.

Salon’s “Milk Money”: media scrutiny of the IBMP-Prolacta partnership

At the time, I held the opinion that this “collaboration” was essentially a push for Prolacta to gain a supposedly arms-length “non-profit” front for its milk collection activities. And the exploitation of the image of sick black starving babies doesn’t hurt, either. This is nothing new for Prolacta. Prolacta has dubbed its commercial milk-collection arm the “National Milk Bank”, with an “org” suffix (nationalmilkbank.org). When it was first set up, Prolacta-NMB claimed openly on its webpage to be a non-profit organisation. (The claim has since been removed).

Unsurprisingly, women are more likely to donate milk when they feel it is going to a good cause, rather than when they know that they’re being exploited for massive profits by venture capitalists.

Of course, my concerns were dismissed by the IBMP founder. No, she said, we just have this little arrangement with Prolacta, they’re helping us out with processing. We’re not Prolacta, we’re totally independent. Prolacta are being all altruistic in all this, and by the way, aren’t they lovely to donate all these resources for the greater good? Don’t they deserve some good publicity for it?

So guess who’s the director of the new Californian branch of the “International Breastmilk Project”? April Brown. Daughter of Elena Medo. Who’s Elena Medo? The CEO and founder of Prolacta.

Arm’s length arrangement, my arse.

*** If you’re in the USA or Canada and wish to donate milk to a real non-profit organisation, check out HMBANA, the Human Milk Banking Association of North America. ***

Filed under: breastfeeding, ethics, obstreperation

Foregrounding the object redux: rape research from the UK

A while back, I wrote about the effects of the passive voice and agent deletion in media reporting of sexual violence, in Passive Aggression: Foregrounding the Object.

An article in the UK Telegraph hit me between the eyes today: Four out of 10 rape victims intoxicated.

Nearly four out of 10 female rape victims had been drinking before the assault, Home Office research revealed yesterday.
[...]
Alcohol appeared to be most significant in assaults by strangers.
[...]
The overall conviction rate for rape among a total of 676 cases across the eight areas was six per cent – the same as the figure for England and Wales.

Some police forces were more successful at reducing the likelihood that a victim would withdraw their complaint, the research found.

I thought I’d have a go at re-activising it:

“Forty percent of rapists target women and girls who have been drinking before they sexually assault them, Home Office research revealed yesterday.
[...]
Men who raped women and girls they didn’t know were particularly likely to rape drunk victims.
[...]
Some police forces were more successful at increasing the likelihood that a victim would withdraw her complaint, the research found.”

Does it have a different effect, to you?

Filed under: language, obstreperation, peeves, sexual violence

The useless bit of flesh around a vagina

[Image credit: Cincinnati Institute for Reproductive Health]

I think every feminist has a least favourite term for “women”. And they’re all teeth-grindingly offensive in different ways: “girls”, “broads”, “chicks”, “babes”, “coeds”, “fillies”, “skirts”.

Meredith Clark offers an article on the “f-word” on Tallahassee.com: “No, not that one! It’s ‘female’ “. (She is talking specifically of “female” as a noun meaning “woman”, not as an adjective.) While Clark brackets the article with irritating INAFB[1] apologetics, the meat of it resonates with me. “Females” has been getting under my skin for decades. In my experience, men use “females” when they’re thinking of women as non-human objects for display or sex, or as strange incomprehensible non-men creatures:

“Let’s go to the pub tonight and find us some females!”
“There sure are a lot of hot females here tonight, eh?” *grunts of agreement*
“I just don’t understand females.”

One of my first hits, idly plugging this into google? “How to Argue With Females”: a huh-huh list of how women are illogical, unintelligent, easily-frazzled, jealous, overemotional, and menstrually-incapacitated. (The comments get all the way to three before someone suggests rape.)

Why is “female”, used as a synonym for “woman”, so irritating? I think because it designates women as marked by our sex, and only by our sex. Just as “skirts” reduces us to a piece of clothing, and “fillies” as sleek wild young things to be tamed, and “coeds” to rather novel but ultimately unimportant college accessories, “females” shoves us firmly into the sex category. Nothing else is important – not, as Clark says, our talents; not our passions or hates or history or humanity; just our reproductive organs. We’re reduced to a support system for a uterus and vagina, discussed in a detached manner as if we were animals on a wildlife show.

[1] “I’m not a feminist, but…”

[Hat tip to tigtog.]

Filed under: language, peeves